Gourmet Garden: December 2015

Making Cheese with Wangapeka Rd Milk

We got some fresh raw milk from our friendly neighbour this week and pasteurised about 6L of it, then the rest we used to make cheese.

It is a lovely milk, we have been drinking and enjoying it, and it is creamy and crisp.

For the cheeses we made Ricotta and Haloumi.

Pulled Pork and Slaw

TO DO - recipe up for me to refer to when I cook it in a few weeks.

Cook Pork

Place 1kg boneless pork shoulder (trimmed of rind) and 1 cup water in an electric slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW for 7 hours or until meat is tender.

Drain cooking liquid and cook some rice in it with old vegies for chickens or pigs.
Return pork to slow cooker; shred with 2 forks. Stir in the following ingredients:

1 3/4 cups barbecue sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons hot sauce
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Cover and cook on LOW for 1 hour.

Make Slaw

2 1/2 cups cabbage-and-carrot shredded, some chives and things from garden
2 tbsp. mayo
2 tbsp. yoghurt
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt

Mussels grilled with toppings

Tom and I collected heaps of mussels the other day on Little Wanganui headland.

We kept them in salt water for 24 hours so they would spit their sand out, then boiled them till they just opened.

Laid out on a tray, we made various toppings and grilled them:

- lemongrass and soy (my favourite) ! ! !
- garlic, onion, bacon, cream
- garlic, onion, butter
- garlic, onion, chicken salt, butter
- garlic, onion, curry powder, mayo
- garlic, onion, sweet soy

eaten with fresh focaccia

Christmas Croissants

Tom and I used the River Cottage bread book recipe for croissants and started the dough on xmas eve to roll and cook them the next morning. They were delicious!

Process in pictures:

roll out dough to 1cm thick rectangle

roll out cold butter to half the size of the dough

Fold inwards in 6th's

seal edges

Roll out again to original rectangle

Fold in 4ths, refrigerate for 1 hour

...at this point we went for a walk....

Roll out again to 1cm thickness rectangle

Cut into isosceles triangles and roll up from thick end

Freeze some of these and keep out as many as you want to eat.

Leave in a warm spot to rise until about 1/3 larger covered in a plastic bag or damp tea towel

Bake at 180 degrees C for 15 minutes or so

Notes: The only thing I would change would be the butter content (reduce it maybe by 10%) because they were seeping a lot of butter as they rose in the morning, and also when they were baking, which I found a bit wasteful. They also tasted very buttery which was great but they were a bit more chewy and dense than I had imagined - I wanted very flaky crisp crusts.

Little Wanganui

Tom and I just moved to Little Wanganui on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand

We have a nice house on a couple of acres surrounded by temperate rainforest, that has a cow, chickens, and some raised beds for planting herbs and greens safe from the marauding weka birds.